Sun Fei's heart jolted.
He swung his great axe sideways again and again, cutting down several monsters in front of him, then hurriedly turned to look. The beautiful mercenary did not seem to have been attacked. She stood motionless in the dim cave some distance away, her whole body rigid and her hand trembling around her longbow. Tears fell unchecked, drop by drop, as she stared, pale-faced, at a dark shape on the ground.
Puzzled, Sun Fei hurried over.
Only when he got closer did he see that the dark shape lying on the ground was the horribly mutilated, bloodstained corpse of a female Rogue.
The corpse wore the rough leather armor most common among the female Rogues. She, too, had long red hair and a pretty face. She seemed a little younger than Elena, perhaps only seventeen or eighteen. She had clearly suffered extreme, inhuman abuse at the demons' hands before she died. Their claws had torn her breasts to shreds, and her heart had been ripped out. Horrifying scratches covered her fair, soft thighs, and the private place between her legs had been reduced to a ghastly, bloody hole. The flesh on her right leg seemed to have been eaten away by something, exposing jagged white bone covered in teeth marks...
"Oh God... no... she... she's Nina. She disappeared a month ago when she went with us to the Blood Moor to look for food. I never thought she would..."
Elena knelt on the ground, sobbing so hard she could barely speak. "She was only seventeen. Last time was her first mission outside the camp... and she volunteered for it... Nina always trained so hard. No matter how difficult things got, she always had a radiant smile on her face. She was like a happy little angel, encouraging us and making us laugh. I never thought... sob... those cruel demons should all go to hell!"
Listening to the beautiful mercenary's broken, tearful account, Sun Fei understood a little of what had happened.
Clearly, the abused woman before him had been a companion Elena knew. She had probably been abducted by demons when the female Rogues went out on a mission in the wilderness about a month ago, but no one knew why she had died so horribly in this cave.
At seventeen, a girl should have been innocent and carefree, yet she had suffered such a tragic fate. Though Sun Fei had not known the girl named Nina, he could not help feeling a profound sadness.
All along, though the Diablo World had felt so real to Sun Fei, though injuries hurt, though NPCs were intelligent, and though Sun Fei himself could get tired, thirsty, hungry, and exhausted... subconsciously, he had still regarded it as little more than a game.
Only now, looking at the horrifying corpse before him, listening to Elena tearfully recount the little girl's life, and seeing Elena sobbing uncontrollably by the end, did Sun Fei suddenly realize that perhaps he had been wrong. The world of Diablo was a living, breathing world too. The people in it were not only intelligent, but also flesh and blood, with feelings of their own.
"Elena, don't cry. Get up! Let's kill every monster here and avenge Nina!"
Sun Fei did not know how to comfort the tear-streaked beauty.
He reached out and helped the weeping mercenary to her feet.
A moment ago, she had been a deadly warrior whose every arrow took a life. Now, she was as fragile as an ordinary little girl in need of protection, revealing the vulnerable side beneath her calm, strong exterior.
Perhaps this was her true nature showing.
No matter how powerful she was, or how calm she appeared when facing monsters, Elena was ultimately just a girl in her early twenties. In Sun Fei's previous life, a young, beautiful girl like her would have been on a university campus, living her youth and life to the fullest. Yet in the Diablo World, she had no choice but to train hard to survive, fight bloody, cruel monsters, and watch the young sisters around her, each like a flower, die, able only to weep helplessly.
Sun Fei used his great axe to dig a large hole in the cave's hard floor and buried poor Nina in it.
As he moved Nina's corpse, Sun Fei found something, just as he had expected and as in the computer game from his previous life. It was not gold or equipment, however, but a small cloth packet of plant seeds.
Clearly, this brave little girl who had gone out to find food for the camp had, even in such circumstances, used her flower-like life to leave behind the hope of food she had found.
Elena treated the little packet of seeds like a treasure, carefully tucking it against her chest.
After burying Nina's body, the two continued on their way.
Shaken by what had happened, Elena radiated killing intent. Her Ice Arrows screamed through the air like meteors, showing no mercy, each one taking a demon's life. Sun Fei hardly needed to lift a hand; the volleys of Ice Arrows swiftly dealt with every monster in sight.
Elena's attitude toward Sun Fei, however, had changed considerably.
Though the two still did not speak and continued to advance swiftly and silently through the pitch-dark cave, and though the mercenary, beautiful as a valkyrie, remained as serene as a secluded orchid, Sun Fei could faintly sense that the eyes behind him had grown much, much gentler when they looked at him...
As they advanced, they came across several more corpses of female Rogues who had been tortured and killed. Fortunately, Elena did not know any of them, which saved a great deal of trouble. Out of humanitarian concern, Sun Fei buried the unfortunate women's bodies as well.
Drawing on his memories from his previous life, Sun Fei chose their route skillfully. He did not enter the second level of the Underground Passage, instead quickly finding the opening to the Dark Wood on the first level. Following it, the two finally reached the Dark Wood.
The scene before them suddenly brightened.
The Dark Wood was not shrouded in darkness. Its vegetation was more luxuriant than that of the Blood Moor and the Cold Plains, though it could hardly be called a forest.
A light rain drizzled from the sky.
Wherever they looked, demons and monsters gathered in groups. Notably, the demons and monsters here seemed fiercer. The moment they saw someone emerge from the opening, they howled and charged over.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh-!
A volley of Ice Arrows shot out.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh-!
The two-handed great axe traced deadly arcs through the air.
Under the slaughter wrought by this crazed man and woman, the demons and monsters charged fast but died even faster.
The demons fell one after another like wheat before a scythe, their miserable howls echoing across the wilderness. Before long, the two stepped over the monsters' bleeding corpses and arrived before a massive dead tree at least fifty meters tall.
This was the legendary Tree of Inifuss.
Rotting corpses lay piled around the towering tree, while swarms of black flies buzzed about. Even its branches bore numerous mutilated bodies dripping black pus and completely decayed skeletons. A sickening stench filled the air, and the whole scene was as gloomy and terrifying as hell itself.
Pinching his nose, Sun Fei slowly approached and touched the trunk.
Smack!
A white parchment scroll immediately "shot" down from the tree.
Damn, it looks fierce and vicious, but it's actually a shameless one. I barely touched it, and it climaxed and shot its load... Sun Fei thought wickedly.
He picked the parchment scroll up from the ground, unrolled it, and examined it. A large circle had been drawn on it in a mysterious dark red pigment resembling blood, with a five-pointed star inside. The rest was covered in mysterious symbols, like the indecipherable talismans Maoshan Taoists had made with cinnabar in his previous life. Sun Fei could not understand a single bit of it.
"No help for it. Looks like I'll have to take it back to Auntie Nun for her to translate."
Sun Fei carefully put the scroll away, then picked out several valuable pieces of equipment the demons had dropped and put them in his backpack. He then used a Scroll of Town Portal to open a portal. With a faint hum, a blue portal more than two meters tall appeared beside him.
Once he had finished, Sun Fei turned and signaled to Elena, who had been keeping watch nearby, to hurry and follow him into the portal. But he saw that the appearance of the portal had once again brought a look of surprise to her pretty, heroic face.
"Is that... a Scroll of Town Portal?"
Seemingly unable to believe it, Elena asked in a trembling voice.
At that moment, the beautiful mercenary could not help thinking, If my sisters had had these magical scrolls when they fought monsters in the wild before, how many casualties could have been avoided? Maybe many of the girls like Nina wouldn't have had to die?
"Yes, it's a Scroll of Town Portal."
Although Sun Fei noticed Elena's reaction, he did not think much of it. What was so unusual about a Scroll of Town Portal worth only eighty gold? Time was short, and his next plan would require a great deal of it, so he could not afford to delay. He gave her a casual answer, then turned and stepped into the portal.
Rogue Encampment.
Sun Fei went straight to Auntie Nun Akara to have her translate the Scroll of the Tree of Inifuss.
The beautiful mercenary Elena, who came out of the portal right behind him, carefully stood guard beside it. This was the first time in her life that Elena had returned to camp through a portal, and she was filled with shock and curiosity. He had originally wanted to see her sisters and tell them of Nina's death, but when he considered his current identity and duty, he hesitated and abandoned the idea.
Two or three minutes later, Sun Fei hurried back with the parchment scroll.
"What, didn't you go talk to your sisters?"
Elena is an important character too, and I also need to establish everything about the Diablo World, so this section took a little more space.
The climax is coming soon.
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